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64th Congress ) cttmatu S Document 

1st Session \ bkNATK j No 45g 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS 



SPEECH 

ON THE 



POLITICAL ISSUES OF NINETEEN SIXTEEN 
DELIVERED AT ELKO, NEV. 

ON MAY 19, 1916 

By 
HON. CHARLES A. TOWNE 




i (,-&(*$'! H 



PRESENTED BY MR. CHILTON 
June 2, 1916.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1916 



■ T7^t 



D. of D. 
JUN 27 1916 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS: THE ISSUES OF 1916. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES A. TOWNE, 

(A Former United Slates Senator from the stale of Minnesota.) 
ELKO, NEV., MAY 10, 191G. 



Mr. Chairman and Fellow Americans: 

We have assembled upon the eve of a political campaign under in- 
ternational and domestic auspices unprecedented in the history of 
the world. There is raging among the Christian powers of Europe 
a war with which, for cruelty and destructiveness, no mutual murder 
among nations in all past history is to be compared. They have un- 
chained all the brutish instincts of barbaric man and have augmented, 
disciplined, and directed them with all the organized resources of 
modern science. The result is a challenge to the sanity of the human 
race. An inevitable incident is the derangement of international 
relations and a menace to the commercial liberties of neutral states. 

Domestically we are approaching the end of an administration. 
Democratic in all branches, which has accomplished an economic 
revolution in our national economy and reversed absolutely the trend 
of our political development. 

The concurrence of these two situations confronts the American 
people in this campaign with considerations of unexampled delicacy, 
difficulty, and importance. They impart an even more than ordi- 
nary solemnity to the inquiries and deliberations which ought to 
precede every great political pronouncement by the electorate of 
this Republic. 

It is to-night my proud privilege to speak to you on the achieve- 
ments of the national Democratic administrtaion during the eventful 
period since the 4th day of March, 1913, and to submit, for your con- 
sideration, some of the reasons for believing that an indorsement of 
those achievements by the voters of the United States in the mo- 
mentous election of next November is both deserved on the party 
record and demanded by the interest and the glory of the American 
people. 

No survey of this past accomplishment would be adequate, nor 
could any appeal for future popular confidence be hopefully made. 
without at least a brief introductory reference to the political and 
economic history of the country, exhibiting in their proper per- 
spective the events of the last three years and vindicating the right 
of the Democratic Party to leadership in the pending contest for 
industrial liberty and social justice. 

3 



4 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

Even before the discovery of America men had dreamed that some- 
time a new world would be found beyond the western ocean, in which 
the most significant acts in the great human drama should be staged. 
After the founding of the colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, and 
especially after the pulses of a nascent national life were felt, the 
ancient prophecies became very definitely the inspiration of the 
loftiest conceptions touching the destiny of America. In 1784 Dr. 
Richard Price only voiced the quite prevalent opinion among earnest 
and thoughtful men when he declared that the era opened by the 
accomplishment of American Independence would witness " a gen- 
eral diffusion of the principles of humanity."' This idea, which has 
been a frequent theme of the greatest and sincerest of our patriots 
and statesmen, found fitting expression about a year ago in these 
words of the illustrious present Chief Executive of the Nation: 
"America has a great cause which is not confined to the American 
Continent. It is a cause of humanity itself."' 

In the attempt to realize this destiny the American people, under 
the leadership of George Washington, threw off the yoke of foreign 
rule; under the guidance of Abraham Lincoln they abolished an 
institution that held a deeper bondage for the white man's soul than 
for the black man's body; and now, under the captaincy of Woodrow 
Wilson, they have begun the overthrow of privilege, the equalization 
of opportunity, and the political and industrial enfranchisement of 
the average man. 

Splendid as were the first two struggles mentioned, it is obvious 
that the third, if it be equally successful, must prove the most splen- 
did of all. It will be waged with different weapons and will extend 
over an incomparably longer period, but its ultimate success will be 
the consummation of the others — marking, indeed, the goal of all 
the struggles in the progress of mankind since social evolution began. 

It is the crowning glory of the Democratic Party to be the chosen 
instrument of this "New Freedom.*' The party has returned to its 
pristine allegiance to the cause of the many against the few. Begin- 
ning, under its great founder, Thomas Jefferson, as the champion of 
that cause, it gradually succumbed to the inevitable temptations of 
power until, by 18G0, it had become the tool of the most concentrated 
and aggressive special interest of that age, the institution of human 
slavery. Swept from office, in a great moral revolution, by the party 
of Lincoln, which consciously adopted the principles as it also re- 
vived the original name of the party of Jefferson, the party of 
Democracy, purified by exile and abstinence, and panoplied in the 
consecrated armor of a new crusade, began in 1912 the task of ex- 
pelling the legions of privilege which the Republican Party had 
entrenched in every stronghold of the Government. 

This task has now been partially performed and the party is about 
to seek from the people a mandate for the continuance of the work. 
But before I invite your scrutiny of a few of the principal items in 
this achievement let me ask you to take note of the fact that the 
case presented is not the ordinary one of the successes of a party in 
writing certain laAvs upon the statute books. Here is no victory of 
an organized opportunism. You will fail to grasp the true signifi- 
cance, whether of what the Democratic Party has already achieved 
' under Woodrow Wilson or of what it proposes yet to do under that 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 5 

same inspiring leadership, unless you realize that the entire program 
represents a deliberate revolution 'in the purposes, methods, and sanc- 
tion's of the Government of this Republic. This view can not be over- 
emphasized. Some one has well said that the Republican Party is a 
party of measures, while the Democratic Party is a party of prin- 
ciples. Now, the basic principle of the Democratic Party is that the 
proper concern of government is the greatest good of the greatest 
number. It embodies the interest of the many rather than of a feAv 
only. It abhors every form of legalized privilege. It guarantees 
equal opportunity to all. The party has entered upon a purposed 
program of making this principle good in the political and economic 
life of the people of the United States. When, therefore, our citizens 
are invited to weigh the performances of the party during its present 
incumbency of office, and its proposals for future action, over against 
corresponding performances and proposals by the Republican Party, 
they should bear in mind that an adverse judgment upon the Demo- 
cratic case involves not merely the conclusion that a particular mat- 
ter might have been more wisely managed under Republican auspices. 
but that it would be better for the country to face about and march 
backward, away from the dawn of the era of equal rights back into 
the gloom of industrial feudalism. For the victory of 1912 was 
more than a party victory; it was the triumph of an idea. The de- 
feat of the Republican Party in that campaign was more than a party 
defeat; it was the overthrow of an outgrown and vicious theory of 
government. 

A consideration of the course of events since the 1th day of March. 
1913, will show that the Democratic Party has recognized the solemn 
nature of the trust imposed upon it by the verdict of the elections 
of 1912, and that it has been responsive to that trust in the conduct 
of the Government in both domestic and foreign affairs. In an 
earnest attempt to realize the high democratic ideal of equality, jus- 
tice, and humanity, it has sought to lessen privilege and to broaden 
opportunity in the industrial and economic life of our own people, 
and, while preserving peace with the nations of the earth, to vindi- 
cate neutral rights and commercial liberties upon the high seas. 

This occasion will not permit an exhaustive review of the entire 
catalogue of Democratic achievement. I shall attempt merely to re- 
cite its principal items and with no purpose of exhaustive treatment. 

THE TARIFF. 

The subject that first invites our attention in this connection is 
obviously that of the tariff. In regard to it let me first emphasize 
again the fact that the action of the Democratic Party in substitut- 
ing the Underwood Tariff Act for the Payne-Aldrich Act was not 
the mere substitution of one set of tariff schedules for another. It 
was the displacement of one system by another, the overthrow of an 
outworn and discredited fiscal doctrine by one more modern and 
scientific. Superficially the situation presented is that of replacing 
a tariff averaging about 54 per cent with one averaging about half 
as much. Fundamentally, the event marks a revolutionary epoch in 
the fiscal theory and practice of this Government. 

It is notorious that the original doctrine of the Republican Party 
was that of protection as incidental to the necessity of raising the 



6 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

great bulk of the national revenue through duties on imports. A 
glance at the first platform of that party adopted at a national 
convention, held at Philadelphia in June, 1856, will make this per- 
fectly clear. It is no less evident that the present position of that 
party is that of protection for protection's sake. Time will not 
permit a full review of the course by which that great organiza- 
tion degenerated from the championship of human liberty to a 
partnership with organized economic privilege. Suffice it to say, 
in passing, that no charge of specific moral delinquency lies on this 
account against the Republican Party. Unfortunately, it is a rule 
of political experience rarely challenged by an exception that the 
possession of power tends to corrupt the possessor. There is always 
a vigilant minority ready, when the general public sentiment be- 
comes careless, to take control of the party which is in control of 
the Government. Time and again it has happened in the history 
of self-governing communities that a spasm of public virtue, or a 
fierce reaction against oppresive laws, has swept into power a party 
pledged to a program of popular liberties, only to be followed by a 
slow surrender of the new forces to the old influences, until the 
party of progress becomes a party of reaction, the impulse toward 
economic freedom eventuates in a program of self-interest, and then 
a new political revolution is born and the cycle is repeated. 

A brief reference to our own history will illustrate this law of 
paradoxes. The party of Thomas Jefferson came into power March 
4, 1801, as a protest against the old Federal Party's centralizing 
policies of Alexander Hamilton. Its creed was synthesized by its 
immortal founder in the memorable motto: " Equal rights for all; 
special privileges to none." Thus, at its very birth, was the Demo- 
cratic Party dedicated to the fundamental principle of industrial 
freedom ; and it must always remain an inspiration to sincere Demo- 
crats that the same magical pen which traced the immortal guaranties 
of the Nation's Declaration of Independence engraved upon the 
original charter of their party a proclamation supplemental and 
complements! to that declaration. The creed of the party, practi- 
cally coeval with our nationality and designedly expressive of the 
great purpose of that nationality as realized in its democratic con- 
ditions, must last while the Nation itself endures, embraced and 
advocated by some vital political organization. 

The Democracy of to-day should be devoutly thankful that it 
has returned to the service of the Jeffersonian gospel. Between its 
advent to power in 1801 and its expulsion in 1860, it had followed 
the almost inevitable custom, becoming " subdued to what it had 
worked in, like the dyer's hand"; until, when repudiated by the 
American people under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln calling 
for the restoration of Jeffersonian principles, it had become the tool 
of a special interest. The party of Lincoln, which succeeded to 
power, underwent a similar sad transformation, but with acceller- 
ated speed and more shameless surrender. There is no more inter- 
esting story in our politics than that which tells of the gradual 
but certain declension of the Republican Party from the high estate 
of 1860 to the degradation of 1912; from the championship of civil 
liberty to the sponsorship of industrial servitude. 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 7 

It is not to be supposed that such an abandonment of its ancient 
inspirations would be submitted to without protest by the rank and 
file of the party. Indeed, such protest has been frequent and violent 
from 1872 until now. It finds expression in denunciation of both 
specific partly measures and general tendencies of administration, but 
especially against the iniquities of a barbarous tariff, The partner- 
ship between the beneficiaries of Republican rule and the leadership 
of the party, exemplified in opulent campaign treasuries filled by the 
tribute of grateful privilege, became a scandal. Increasing numbers 
of Republicans cried out against it. Now and then they Organized 
revolts against it. Had it not been for the almost inexplicable 
tyranny of party habit, they would long ago have reformed the 
party by the overwhelming defeat of the" organization. The prin- 
cipal outcry was, of course, against the party's tariff system, an out- 
cry which its leadership answered by promises of reform. The 
tariff was to be revised, the schedules to be harmonized and greatly 
reduced. These promises, however, were made merely to serve the 
purpose of the campaign and were promptly forgotten afterwards. 
Even the McKinley bill was preceded by promises of tariff reduction. 
The promises took on added emphasis before the campaign which was 
followed by the enactment of the Dingley bill, which, instead of 
reducing duties, raised them. Similar promises, but with even more 
definiteness, were made in the campaign of 1908. They were followed 
by the culminating monstrosity of Republican tariff protection, 
the Payne-Aldrich bill, vigorously denounced even by the Repub- 
lican President whose signature made it effective. Against this 
unblushing betra3 T al, this superlative bad faith, protest was raised 
throughout the country and by none more strongly than by Repub- 
licans. The consequence was that in the platform of their party in 
1012 an attempt was made by the leaders to impart to their customary 
promise of tariff reduction an unusual solemnity ; they not 011I3* prom- 
ised to reduce the tariff but they " unequivocally " promised, evidently 
under the impression that the word of confessed and habitual promise- 
breakers might receive some reinforcement from a change in the 
formula. 

But the party was spared the humiliation of a new recreancy. 
Woodrow Wilson and the Democratic Party, as a result of the elec- 
tions of 1912, came into power in both administrative and legislative 
departments of the Government. That party had also made its prom- 
ises; and the amazement throughout the United States produced by 
the instantaneous entrance of the party upon the performance of 
its pledges was an interesting commentary upon the popular estimate 
of Republican good faith. 

The President promptly summoned Congress in special session. 
For the first time within the memory of living men a tariff bill was 
framed by the representatives of the people and without the master- 
ful intervention of the lobby. 

Nobody contends that the Underwood- Simmons Act was a perfect 
measure. No tariff bill ever was, and none ever will be, perfect. 
But there are two remarkable things to be noted about this legisla- 
tion: First, and this is the thing to be particularly borne in mind, 
it constitutes a deliberate departure from the old-time standard Re- 
publican tariff legislation made frankly in the interest of privileged 



8 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

industries. It is an about-face. It is a serious attempt to establish 
a system of duties on imports which, furnishing, along with other 
resources, adequate national revenues, shall bear with as little hard- 
ship as possible upon any of the industries of the country and afford 
as little refuge as possible for particular benefits to be enjoyed at 
the general expense. It promptly cut the average rate of duties in 
two in the middle. It very largely relieved the necessaries of life 
from the burden of taxes and placed the chief load upon luxuries. 

The second thing to be especially noted about the Democratic tariff 
act is that it went into effect and, so long as conditions permitted it 
a normal operation, continued, with remarkably little disturbance 
of commercial and industrial conditions in view of the fact that it 
represented so fundamental and revolutionary a change in tariff leg- 
islation. This disturbance was much smaller than was generally an- 
ticipated. Indeed, it may well be claimed to have been less than that 
which followed the upward revision by the McKinley, Dingley, and 
Payne- Aldrich tariffs. Becoming effective late in 1913, its normal 
operation was interrupted by the breaking out in Europe, in July, 
1911, of incomparably the greatest war in the history of the world, 
involving an unprecedented interruption of the usual course of inter- 
national trade and industry. Much controversy has been indulged 
in regarding the effect of this war upon the Democratic tariff act. 
It is perhaps sufficient here to say that it is as permissible for the 
advocates of the law to claim that an undisturbed career would 
abundantly have justified its wisdom as it is for the critics of the 
act to declare that the war has served to obscure its defects. Both 
are arguing from premises based on assumed conditions. An abso- 
lute demonstration can be made only by actual experience when the 
world shall have resumed its usual international habits. 

COMMON-SENSE ATTITUDE TOWARD TARIFF : A TARIFF COMMISSION. 

Let it be remarked, however, that during the period from No- 
vember, 1913, to and inclusive of June, 1911, our imports were 10 
per cent greater than during the similar preceding period, and that 
our favorable balance of trade for the fiscal year ending June 30, 
1911, was $300,000,000 greater than during the same relative period 
following the enactment of the Payne- Aldrich bill. Let it also be 
remarked that the Democratic Party occupies toward this great 
question of the tariff a common-sense attitude, and is not so com- 
mitted to the precise terms, rates, and schedules of the Underwood 
Act as not to be able to see, and ready at any time to remedy, in- 
sufficiencies or inequities in its operation. Witness the recent action 
of the party forestalling its original provision removing the duty 
from sugar. Nor is it to be doubted that the wisdom of the party 
will prove equal at any subsequent occasion to modify the provisions 
of the act in accordance with the requirements demonstrated by 
actual experience. 

For it must be admitted, fellow citizens, that opinion within the 
Democratic Party has changed within recent years in regard to this 
question of the tariff ; or, rather should it be stated, there has come to 
be an increasing recognition of the great basic truth that no char- 
acter of legislation is more empiric than tariff legislation ; that to no 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 9 

branch of governmental activity may be applied with more truth the 
statement that abstractions, maxims, alleged general principles, are 
apt to be of only mischievous use. In a speech in the House of 
Representatives in May, 1906, I attempted to show, and I think I 
did show, with the support of English and American experience 
particularly, that whether a duty should he high or low at any given 
time, or how high and how low it should be, is absolutely a rela- 
tive question, a question to be determined by the circumstances ex- 
isting at the time, both domestic and international. 

That the position just indicated has practically become that of the 
Democratic Party is shown by the fact that it has committed itself to 
pass, and will pass at this session of Congress, an act creating a 
tariff commission whose duty it shall be to investigate and report 
upon industrial, commercial, social, and financial facts as neces- 
sary bases of any rational system of import duties. This places tariff 
legislation where it belongs, upon a scientific basis. It will supply 
the necessary data for legislation that should be adequate in produc- 
ing revenue and just and fair to all classes in the community. 

Let us ask for a moment, my friends, what sort of a figure will be 
cut by the Republican Party in attempting, if it shall attempt it in 
this campaign, to make an issue out of the tariff? In the first place, 
every charge they bring against existing legislation on the subject 
is based upon a begging of the question. They say that, if the 
European war had not happened, such and such disastrous con- 
sequences would have followed. But how little they are able to esti- 
mate the factors in the situation may be seen at once by considering 
the undoubted fact, which no Republican will have the hardihood to 
challenge, that no living man or association of men would be able at 
this moment to write one single schedule in any proposed new Re- 
publican tariff act. The war in Europe has completely upset all 
previous conditions and relations of international business. Nobody 
can now tell in what respects, and how far. those conditions and 
relations when reestablished after the Avar may vary from their 
former normal character. This everybody must admit. 

What becomes, therefore, of the Republican claims for return to 
power based on any possible proposition of tariff legislation? In 
the absence of ability to formulate any comprehensive plan whatever, 
they are relegated to the necessity of ringing the changes upon two 
customary Republican themes : First, the alleged business incapacity 
of the Democratic Party; and, secondly, the outworn platitudes of 
incorrigible protectionism for protection's sake. The first, namely, 
the supposed business ineptitude of Democrats, is answered by the 
achievements of the last three years, in a program which, including 
tariff revision, antitrust reinforcement, and, above all, the reconstruc- 
tion of our entire banking and currency system, surpasses any record 
in the political history of "the United States for practical business and 
administrative capacity. 

PEOPLE TIRED OF ECONOMIC FEUDALISM. 

The second point is destroyed through the operation of forces of 
which the average Republicans mind is unconscious. The people of 
the United States have simply become tired of economic feudalism. 

S. Doc. 456, 64-1 2 



10 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

They have outgrown it. The inequalities that characterize its do- 
mestic operation and the handicap it imposes upon our newborn and 
rapidly expanding ambition for an increased share in the complex 
commerce of the outside world are now so clearly recognized b}' 
public opinion that a return to antique Republican usage is incon- 
ceivable. This situation many Republicans fail to comprehend. 
They have succeeded, naturally and logically, to the former imputed 
attitude of Democrats charged with learning nothing and forgetting 
nothing. It is the Republicans now that answer the description of 
the Bourbons. They are troglodytes. They dwell in the caves. 
They feed on the gloom of tradition. The light of prophecy can not 
reach them. They must inevitably hug their gods until the earth- 
quake of political reconstruction shall destroy their prison house. 

BANKING AND CUBRENCY LEGISLATION. 

Whatever criticism the opposition may pass upon Democratic tariff 
legislation, not even the desperate necessities of a political campaign 
embolden our critics to challenge the wisdom and beneficence of the 
Federal reserve bank act. In estimating this great accomplishment 
it is difficult to withstand the temptation to use language of seeming 
extravagance, for there is a general disposition to accord to it the 
highest possible rank in the annals of fundamental and constructive 
legislation. Indeed, if I may be permitted to characterize it, after 
some study of the legislative history of modern times. I do not hesi- 
tate to say that the passage, under the championship of the rejuve- 
nated and rededicated Democratic Party, of the Federal reserve bank 
act is more epochal in financial legislation, which is the most impor- 
tant branch of governmental activity, more responsive to scientific 
principles, and more fraught with helpfulness in complicated com- 
mercial relations, than any legislative act in the entire history of the 
world. 

The old national-bank system, born of the necessities of an un- 
heralded Civil War and resultant vast expenditures, was a fairly 
serviceable makeshift under the circumstances of its creation. The 
Republican Party is entitled to whatever credit was deserved tor an 
emergency measure that made a market for national securities and 
partially supplied an extraordinary demand for paper currency. 
But as a permanent fiscal instrument it was a failure. It was built 
on unscientific principles, had no automatic response to changing 
conditions, and aggravated some of the ills that a regulated currency 
system should remedy or abolish. Its continued existence during so 
long a period filled with demonstrations of its essential evils was a 
proof at once of popular patience and Republican incompetence. 
Chiefly by reason of its provisions permitting the heaping up of 
the bank reserves in the great banking centers, whereby vast sums of 
money became available for stock manipulation and speculation, the 
system had enlisted in its support and perpetuation a most powerful 
financial interest. This interest Avas always arrayed against any 
suggestion to substitute for a hidebound currency volume determined 
by the size of the national debt, a supply based on the liquid com- 
mercial assets of the country and responsive in quantity to the de- 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. H 

mand for currency uses. So long as the Republican Party reinained 
in power the country swung back and forth between monetary 
famine and currency plethora, a prey to inevitable recurrent credit- 
panics bred by a system that absolutely compelled the banks to re- 
duce accommodations and retire currency at precisely the times when 
business was clamoring for added credit and circulation. 

In the place of this archaic money machine the Democratic Party 
has given to the country a system whereunder a dozen regional re- 
serve banks, so located as to serve most conveniently the great com- 
mercial areas, and under governmental control, become the custodians 
of the country's reserve funds and agencies of commercial rediscount ; 
whereunder, by an automatic operation as natural as breathing. (lie 
need of more exchange medium is met by the transformation of 
commercial bills based on commodity values into currency of general 
circulation, and whereunder, when redundant, the excessive volume 
is reduced pari passu with diminishing requirement. Under this 
beneficent legislation interest rates are equalized, reserves are less 
accessible to speculation and more available for legitimate enterprise, 
and credit panics, the besetting sin of the Republican regime, have 
become practically impossible. 

If the Democratic administration could point to no other achieve- 
ment than the Federal reserve bank act it would deserve the indorse- 
ment of the country in another lease of power. 

RURAL CREDITS. 

But the record embraces far more. If there was one member of 
our great American community that suffered more than any other, 
and derived less assistance than any other, from the old national- 
bank currency system, it was the farmer. Neither that law nor the 
interpretation and administration of it facilitated rural credit. 
Under the Federal reserve act, on the contrary, a tremendous gain 
has already come to the farmer. The reserve bank will discount his 
paper secured by storage on warehouse receipts; his paper arising out 
of breeding, fattening, and marketing live stock; his paper based on 
the purchase of seed grain and on his crops. Indeed, practically all 
the credit paper emitted by the farmer is available for rediscount at 
the reserve banks except paper arising out of the purchase of land 
or its permanent improvement. 

farmer's credit stabilized. 

The accommodation already extended to the agriculturist through 
the machinery of the Federal reserve banks, an accommodation owing 
absolutely to the Democratic Party, aggregates hundreds of millions 
of dollars. And yet the party has not completed its program of 
justice to the farmer. By the Rural-Credits bill, now on its passage 
through Congress, it extends the field of financial relief for him into 
the domain of the purchase and the mortgaging of land, by facili- 
tating the organization by farmers of associations mutualizing, con- 
solidating, and stabilizing their individual credit and creating a new 
and practical form of negotiable security. 



12 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

OTHER, MEASURES. 

The limits of an address like the present will not allow me to pass 
in anything like comprehensive review. all the achievements of the 
DemocraticTParty under the inspired and inspiring leadership of our 
great President/ Those already briefly cited constitute an all suffi- 
cient basis Avhereon to appeal to the voters of not only Nevada, but all 
her sister Commonwealths as well, for a renewal of public confidence. . 
Yet I feet that I ought at least to name the chief items in the still 
unrecited calendar of Democratic performance for the purpose of 
showing how indefatigably the party has striven to keep its promises, 
and in'insistence upon the fact, previously pointed out, that this 
activity represents a conscious return of that party to the original 
purpose of its creation, a definite assumption of the solemn duty and 
the high resolve to carry out under Woodrow Wilson the program 
to which it was consecrated by Thomas Jefferson. 

Chief among the other domestic measures to be credited to the 
present Democratic administration which, though perhaps not rank- 
ing in importance with the fundamentally constructive legislation 
already mentioned, are nevertheless of similar import and responsive 
to the same basic Democratic purpose, are the following, to which I 
shall refer in only brief recital: 

CLAYTON ANTITRUST ACT. 

The Clayton Antitrust Act. supplementing the Sherman law in 
line with commercial experience and judicial examination since that 
famous statute was enacted, making more definite the object of the 
law as directed against combinations of capital whose operation is 
injurious to the general good, against certain contracts calculated 
to produce or foster monopoly, against holding companies, interlock- 
ing directorates, and price discriminations calculated to injure or 
destroy competitive business, and granting to American labor a char- 
ter of industrial emancipation by excepting it from the commodity 
classification. 

TIJADE-COMMISSIOX ACT. 

The Federal Trade Commission act, establishing a commission 
with large powers of investigation and supervision, acting as an 
administrative agency to advise business men, unearth unfair prac- 
tices, and aid honest enterprise in its purpose to observe the law, 
obviating much vexatious and unnecessary litigation and making 
possible many adjustments between ' ; big business*' and the law 
without resort to the long procedure and rigorous formulas of the 
courts. 

seamen's act. 

The Seamen's act, extending to the virtually enslaved laborers 
upon the sea a tardy participation in that alleviation of harsh labor 
conditions which has been one of the most splendid achievements of 
modern democratical government. 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 13 

AGRICULTURAL EXPANSION ACT. 

The Smith-Lever agricultural expansion act, for the systematic 
promotion of agricultural development, providing f or demonstrators 
in household and farm economics and in all branches of husbandry, 
which is destined to prove of inestimable benefit to American agri- 
culture in standardizing production and distribution costs and 
methods, and in systematizing the entire economy of the average 
farm, to whatever object chiefly devoted, an act I have heard praised 
almost extravagantly during my present brief visit to Nevada by 
some of your citizens best acquainted with the agricultural possi- 
bilities of your State. 

SHIPPING BILL. 

The Shipping bill, which, though not yet passed, is on the Demo- 
cratic program for the present session of Congress, aiming at pro- 
viding the country with a naval reserve in case of possible war, which 
is fundamental to any scheme of military preparedness, and assuring 
at least some approach toward appropriating the vast commercial op- 
portunities now presented to the United States by the demoralized 
shipping conditions of the world. 

OTHER BENEFICIAL LEGISLATION. 

Nor must it be forgotten that the country owes to the Democratic 
Part}' two further accomplishments that illustrate and vindicate in 
most emphatic fashion the fundamental tenets of democratical gov- 
ernment : The enactment of the income tax, a form of taxation uni- 
versally held by economic authorities to be the fairest and justest 
of all schemes of taxation, because levied in proportion to the pro- 
tection afforded by the Government it contributes to support, and 
borne by those who pay it in proportion to their ability to pay ; and 
the adoption of the constitutional amendment providing for the 
direct election of United States Senators by the people, thus bring- 
ing into more direct and realizable responsibility to the electors of the 
country the membership of what is in some respects the most power- 
ful legislative body known to history. 

I do not hesitate to declare, my friends, that this review of Demo- 
cratic domestic achievement, rapid and far from complete though 
it be, demonstrates that the.claiii of that organization upon the 
support of the voters of the country at the coming election is incom- 
parably stronger than that advanced by any other political party on 
a similar occasion within the memory of living men. Later I shall 
proceed to inquire how our opponents attempt to answer this con- 
tention. 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS. 

If it be true that the present administration has been confronted 
with conditions of exceptional difficulty in the internal affairs of the 
country, what shall be said of the situation presented in the field of 
international relations? If it be true that no preceeding adminis- 
tration in our history has ever ventured to contemplate, much less 
to undertake, a program of revolutionarily constructive legislation 



14 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

at all to be compared with that which the administration of Wood- 
row Wilson not only contemplated but deliberately undertook — 
not only deliberately undertook but has resolutely prosecuted and 
triumphantly carried out — what shall be the measure of our appre- 
ciation of that unparalleled, nay, that unapproached achievement 
which, in the midst of a war whose extent, complexity, destructive- 
ness, and horror not only surpass all other wars of either ancient or 
modern times, but paralyze the pen that tries to describe them and 
the brain that dares to imagine them, has both kept us at peace and 
maintained our rights; kept us at peace amid a multitude of oc- 
currences that would have caused a weaker man than the President 
to drift into w T ar and a less-balanced one to rush into it ; maintained 
our rights which an irresolute man would have surrendered and a 
rash man w'oulcl have sacrificed? 

This is the sublime accomplishment of W T oodrow Wilson that shall 
loom, large and luminous, against the background of this historic 
age, when his critics and detractors shall have vanished utterly and 
his little would-be rivals shall have sought forgotten graves. 

EUROPEAN RELATIONS. 

Be it remembered that, as in the case of our domestic policies, so in 
regard to our foreign relations the course of the Government has 
expressed no varying and vagrant opportunism, but has been delib- 
erately shaped according to the great lights of fundamental and char- 
acteristically Democratic principles. I think it may be justly said 
that, in the difficult and complicated circumstances of our relations 
toward the great belligerent European nations, the President has 
constantly had in mind to remain at peace to the very limit of its 
honorable preservation ; to vindicate neutral rights and the hard-won 
guaranties of international law in all diplomatic patience, but with 
clearly announced ultimate firmness, and to insist that the respective 
belligerents shall yield recognition of these rights and guaranties, not 
as part of a bargain conditioned upon corresponding recognition by 
antagonist powers, but on the inherently meritorious and independ- 
ent grounds on which the United States asserts them. And the great 
fact remains and remains secure from both obscuration and challenge 
by our opponents, that we have preserved peace and have not sur- 
rendered our rights. 

MEXICO. 

In regard to Mexico, I think it equally obvious that President 
Wilson's policy has been predicated upon two or three great funda- 
mental considerations which, when properly apprehended and ap- 
plied, harmonize, rationalize, and justify the conduct of our relations 
toward our unhappy southern neighbor. One of these principles is 
that the United States does not covet any Mexican territory and 
could never wage a war of aggression upon that country. Another 
is that the people of Mexico should be given the utmost possible 
opportunity to restore order and civil government within their own 
borders. Another, that public sentiment in the United States will 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 15 

never support any administration in a policy of intervention in 
Mexico unless and until it shall have been demonstrated to a prac- 
tical certainty that no possible alternative exists. Another, that the 
Monroe doctrine, as developed in its logical implications through a 
virtual entente with the principal Latin-American States, absolutely 
requires at least two things: First, that Latin America shall be fully 
persuaded of our good faith in disclaiming any purpose of aggres- 
sion, annexation, or permanent interference to the south of us; and. 
second, that the prospects of any general and speedy arrival of settled 
political conditions in Central and South America can be immeasur- 
ably increased by letting it be known, beyond all possibility of mis- 
understanding, that this Government will not put a premium upon 
inconsidered revolution, political murder, factional irresponsibility, 
and national bankruptc)'-, by recognizing every bandit chief or sheep- 
thief revolutionary who, finding the capital of a Latin- American 
country temporarily undefended, its army unpaid or disaffected, or 
its commander taking a siesta, shall, through slaughter and pillage, 
succeed in raising a temporary flag over a permanent loan. The fall 
of Huerta has abbreviated by unimaginable mercy the annals of 
unborn revolution. 

REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION. 

If, fellow citizens, the foregoing observations have any consider- 
able weight, a person to whom they should be addressed might be 
excused for an expression of some surprise that any political organi- 
zation should have the hardihood under existing conditions to chal- 
lenge the propriety of continuing in power the President and party 
responsible for the events and achievements recited. Yet such a chal- 
lenge is made. Torn by dfssention and divided by faction, united 
only by a common appetite, and inspired by a blind and inexplicable 
partisanship that condones internal differences more vital than those 
between itself and the Democratic Party, the Republican Party 
denies the beneficence of Democratic accomplishment and puts forth 
pretensions of its own to the favor of the people. 
. It will be worth while very briefly to consider some of the reasons 
which to the Republican Party, or to certain of the respective fac- 
tions that compose it, seem to offer more or less basis for their hope 
of defeating the party in power. 

And first, it is interesting that the party which so fiercely assails 
us proposes after all to do away with very little of our work. No- 
body suggests, so far as I have noticed, the repeal of the Federal re- 
serve act and a return to the monstrosities of the old national-bank 
system. Nobody would repeal the Clayton Antitrust law. No voice 
is raised in behalf of a repeal of the Federal Trade Commission act. 
Some quiet opinion exists in the Republican Party, to be sure, adverse 
to the income tax and to the direct election of United States Sena- 
tors; but the senatorial question is safe behind a constitutional 
amendment, while it won't do to talk much against the income tax 
until the offices shall have been captured, however strong the inten- 
tion to repeal it may be among the dominant interests in that party 
organization. 



16 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

TYPICAL REPUBLICAN TARIFF WAIL. 

Iii all the Republican clamor the nearest approach to a chorus 
is reached on the theme of the tariff. Habit makes this seem to them 
a safe topic. It requires no thought, moreover; all that is needed is 
a rehash of old slogans that in some mysterious way served the party 
turn on many a hard-fought held in the olden days. It is nothing to 
them that the country is in the enjoyment of an abounding prosper- 
ity. They keep up the senseless cry of hard times as a necessary con- 
comitant of a Democratic tariff. If times decline to be hard, so 
much the worse for the times. The dinner pail is not full for the 
simple reason that it isn't a Republican tariff that has filled it. 

They can not understand the popular indifference to their topical 
song. A rude awakening awaits them. When everybody knows that 
with international commercial conditions disjointed, as they now are, 
and with anticipated readjustments after a peace of uncertain com- 
ing absolutely impossible of prognostication, no man or body of men 
in the wide world knows enough to write a single line of a single 
schedule in an imagined Republican tariff bill; when everybody 
knows that any new tariff act must be based on the collation and 
digest of the multitudinous new facts generated by the war; when 
everybody knows that the Democratic Party is providing a perma- 
nent tariff commission for the very purpose of gathering and study- 
ing these facts as the basis of such action as they may indicate; 
when everybody knows that all the productive energies of the land 
were never so prolific as now, that the railroads and steamboats were 
never so busy, the banks never so ready to accommodate, the country 
never so full of gold, jobs never so plentiful, and wages never so 
high; then everybody but some Republican politicians and news- 
papers knows that a typical Republican tariff Avail has about as 
much chance of precipitating a Republican landslide as Henry Ford 
had to charm " the boys" out of the trenches when the Hohenzollerns 
weren't looking. 

PRESIDENT FOR REASONABLE PREPAREDNESS. 

Another complaint is made against the Democracy in the name 
of preparedness. This, too, lacks the force of a coherent and rational 
cry. Too many Republicans don't want any preparedness at all to 
lend a great deal of impressiveness to the vociferations of others 
who can't agree as to whether they want a volunteer army or uni- 
versal military service and conscription. Besides, the country re- 
members the votes on the Gore and McLemore resolutions and can 
not work up much confidence that there is any real purpose to be 
ready to defend its liberties by a party that furnished the over- 
whelming majority, in both Houses, of the votes in favor of the 
proposition that Americans ought by law to surrender the right to 
travel on the high seas. 

Republican minority attempts to appropriate the affirmative of the 
preparedness issue Avill not get very far in the face of a practically 
united Democratic Party supporting a President who says — 

I would not feel that I was discharging the solemn obligation I owe the 
country were I not to speak in terms of the deepest solemnity of the urgency 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 17 

and necessity of preparing ourselves to guard and protect the rights and 
privileges of our people, our sacred heritage of the fathers who struggled to 
make us an independent nation — 

and which is now framing legislation in amplification of our Naval 
and Military Establishments which, while not responsive to the ex- 
treme demands of some Republicans, is vastly beyond the concessions 
of others and represents substantially the average of the prepared- 
ness sentiment of our people. 

CARPING ON BELGIUM AND MEXICO. 

Then there are Republicans like Senator Root and ex-President 
Roosevelt, who now say that we ought to have gone to war because 
Germany invaded Belgium, in spite of the fact that Secretary Root's 
own instructions to the American delegates to The Hague in 1907 
made the specific and emphatic reservation that no convention there 
adopted should bind the United States to any departure from our 
traditional policy of noninterference in the diplomacy of foreign 
States, or from our well-known attitude toward purely American 
questions ; in spite of the fact that Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taf t have 
both indorsed, in speech and in print, President Wilson's conduct 
toward the Belgian incident; in spite of the fact that Mr. Root, 
when Secretary of State, did not go to war with Japan over her 
seizure of Korea, notwithstanding our treaty with Korea, wherein 
we had engaged to use bur good offices if her independence were 
threatened. 

The case of Mexico has also come in for much Republican faultfind- 
ing. But both Presidents Roosevelt and Taft condoned acts of the 
same character as those over which one of them speaks in a way that 
means, if it means anything, that we ought to have marched into 
Mexico long ago, either to intervene or to annex. The fact remains, 
moreover, that President Wilson has shown marvelous patience in a 
situation wherein passion and haste might easily at any moment have 
precipitated a war costing hundreds of thousands of lives and hun- 
dreds of millions of money, a course, as I have heretofore remarked, 
that the American people Avill not justify and that Latin America 
will not view without suspicion and enmity, as long as any alterna- 
tive course is possible. 

REPUBLICAN PARTY WITHOUT AN ISSUE. 

In fine, my friends, the Republican Party has no issue. It can find 
none. It can make none. No great fundamental question looms 
before the country on which that party dare take so decidedly dif- 
ferent a position from that of the Democratic Party as to make a 
clean-cut, definite question for popular judgment. They want the 
offices. That is their whole platform. To that end they are willing 
to meet in two conventions and chaffer and bully and make shadow- 
dance compromises that mean nothing. If either of the two wings, 
so desperately trying to seem to flap separately and so hard to keep 
from flapping together, had an atom of sincerity or self-respect they 
would be meeting as far apart as Seattle and Boston, and as syn- 



18 AX EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

chronous as Mayday and Christmas. The Progressives call the Regu- 
lars worse names than either call the Democrats, and if each is to be 
believed the blackest Democrat is an angel of light compared to the 
leaders of both. Yet the supporters of Roosevelt are willing to make 
a happy family with men they denounce as thieves, and the Regulars 
are getting ready to kiss the hand that smote them in 1912. Bah ! 
It is a disgusting spectacle in this world crisis of real, great, funda- 
mental things, in the year 191G. 

Now and then we hear the once common charge that the Demo- 
cratic Party hasn't any business capacity anyhow, and that only 
the Republicans have brains enough to run the Government; but 
since the Federal reserve act and the efficient administration of great 
Government business, like that of the Treasury, the Interior, and 
the Post Office Departments, the necessary temerity to venture the 
former smug and complacent assertion is less and less in evidence. 

The incoherence and inconsistency manifested by our opponents 
in regard to issues are repeated and illustrated in the characters of 
the motley array of aspirants for their presidential nomination. 
They range from Cummins, who is so far ahead of the procession 
that it can never overtake him, to Weeks, who is so far behind that 
he can't hear the band; from Ford, who wouldn't get into a fight if 
he had to, to Roosevelt, who wouldn't keep out of one if he could; 
from Hughes, who, some say, would be defeated because the people 
know too little about him, to Root, who, they say, would lose because 
the people know too much about him. So; as Dooley says, there ye 
are. Take your choice. Personally I believe one is as easy to beat 
as another. Each has peculiar weaknesses, and none, in view of exist- 
ing conditions, can marshal dangerous strength against the President. 

If it were not for the almost incredible force of indurated and 
incorrigible i>artisanship, the critical situation of the world and the 
wonderful poise and wisdom of our great candidate would lead 
millions of Republicans to cast American ballots this year, make 
Wilson's election an overwhelming certainty, and postpone all petty 
party differences to a more peaceful epoch for settlement. 

But, with most of them. " once a Republican always a Republican." 
A typical case, although, when baldly stated, it may seem exagger- 
ated, is that of a well-known former assistant district attorney in 
New York, a man of ability and character and known for activities 
in many nonpolitical public movements. A few nights ago he made 
a speech in New York, in which he is reported in the papers to have 
said, in substance: 

There come times, my friends, when certain men seem to be raised up by 
Providence for some great public service. At such times we thank God for 
such men. And so I to-night, my friends, say, " Thank God for Woodrow 
Wilson ! " And then, as the applause subsided, he added : " Of course, I shall 
probably have to oppose him this fall. I am, a Republican." 

So fiercely will a man fly into the face of Providence for party 
sake; so unconsciously will he register a determination to remain a 
Republican even though it be to fight Almighty God ! How much 
better, fellow citizens, to be a Democrat this year, pledged to a cause 
that you sincerely believe to be the cause of humanity, and devoted 
utterly to a leader whom even your opponents concede to hold his 
commission at the hands of Jehovah. 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 19 

AS TO NEVADA. 

The atmosphere of your brave young State, my fellow citizens, is 
congenial to democracy — democracy in both its generic and its special 
signification. The circumstances under which an enterprising and 
energetic population is developing your wonderful resources of 
mountain and plain are conducive to a condition of society little 
marked by divisions of caste, where individual effort is both protected 
and rewarded, where cooperation is an impulse and custom, and 
where personal worth is a test of influence. In such a community the 
Democratic Party of to-clay pledged, as it is, to the practical realiza- 
tion of the great fundamental ideals of self-government and equality 
under the law, should be able to count with confidence upon an in- 
stinctive popular indorsement. 

It is in this confidence that I have embraced with much satisfac- 
tion the opportunity of speaking to you at the very threshold of the 
campaign of 1916. It is not the first time that I have been privileged 
thus to meet the sturdy citizenship of Nevada. In the memorable 
political contest of 1900 I traversed your State from end to end, 
speaking in practically every town of any importance within its 
borders. Relatively small in point of population and not influential 
in the number of its electoral votes, the State of Nevada has never- 
theless occupied a place of importance at many stages in our national 
progress. Its admission into the Union was part of the program re- 
sulting in the adoption of the thirteenth amendment to the National 
Constitution. The development of its enormous silver deposits gave 
it for a quarter of a century a unique position in the controversies, 
both national and international, so long waged over bimetallism ; and 
more recently, the single standard having been adopted, it has 
contributed a quite disproportionate share of the country's output of 
gold. At present, if I may judge from indications obvious to a visi- 
tor, you are upon the eve of an agricultural progress, particularly as 
a stock-raising State, destined to supersede in importance and benefi- 
cence your eras of silver and gold. 

Nor can I in your presence be unmindful of the opportunities I 
have enjoyed to become intimately acquainted Avith a number of the 
remarkable men whom your State has sent to the national councils, 
men of the highest ability, of the most untiring industry, and of a 
character and degree of influence utterly disproportionate to the 
modest rank of the State in population and development. Time will 
permit no more than a passing reference to some of them. I shall 
forever regard it as a privilege I can not adequately acknowledge 
that I was permitted for many years to enjoy an intimate personal 
association and friendship with the great Nevada Senator, John P. 
Jones, a man of Socratic intellect, whose influence in all discussions 
of the science of money was felt and recognized throughout the 
world. A tribute is also due to the rugged genius of William M. 
Stewart, to whom, probably more than to any other man, we owe 
the formulation of the mining laws of the United States. And in 
the catalogue of western statesmen whose labors in laying the founda- 
tion of the future greatness of this vast region must ultimately be 
celebrated in eulogy and monument, a high and honorable place is re- 
served for one of your present Senators, Francis G. Newlands. Lack- 



20 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

ing the partisan impulse which guides the activities of many public 
men. Senator Newlands has been a somewhat detached but authorita- 
tive student of big national problems; and to him is properly ascribed 
the chief credit for the adoption of the great policy of irrigation. 
whose almost inestimable influence in the development of this west- 
ern empire is hardly yet sufficiently understood. If the labors of 
the man who makes two blades of grass to grow where only one 
grew before be deemed worthy of special commendation in Holy 
Writ, what paeans of praise shall rise to heaven from generations yet 
unborn in acclaim of him who caused millions of blades to grow 
where none at all grew before and gave to the desert wilderness the 
bloom of the rose ? 

Nor can I. my friends, omit to pay the tribute of my personal re- 
gard, of my very high estimate as to ability and public service, to 
Nevada's most recent representative in the Senate of the United 
States, Key Pittman. I make no apology at all for bringing to your 
attention somewhat in detail the claims your young Senator pos- 
sesses upon the faithful, loyal, and efficacious support of his fellow 
citizens. In what I shall say of him to-night I shall attempt to take 
as little counsel as possible of the love I bear him and rest my judg- 
ment upon an impartial consideration of his qualities and achieve- 
ments. 

In the multiplicity of activities attached to a membership in the 
Senate of the United States, it is inevitable that there should be a 
division of labor and that different men should be active in different 
ways. For example, some Senators devote themselves especially to 
the study and discussion of national questions and to attempts to 
formulate and pass legislation affecting the broad interests of the 
entire country in either their international or their domestic aspect. 
Others give their energies chiefly to matters especially concerning 
their own States and their immediate constituents. Now and then, 
however, there are members of the Senate who possess the natural 
ability, the industry, and the personal adaptation to the varied re- 
quirements for successful activity in both national and local direc- 
tions; men who, while constantly achieving practical results in ad- 
ministration and legislation especially helpful to the people of their 
own States, are also esteemed by their colleagues for the wisdom and 
insight which they bring to bear on the investigation and decision 
of national policies. To this class of statesmen Senator Pittman 
unquestionably belongs. I can say to you. his constituents, basing 
my statement on actual personal knowledge of and acquaintance with 
practically all the men that have come to the Senate of the United 
States during the last quarter of a century, that not in all that time 
lias any State accredited to that high assembly a man who in so 
short a space of time achieved a position of acceptance and influence 
or accomplished concrete results comparably with your own great 
young Senator. 

It is well known that the constructive work of legislative bodies 
is accomplished through the instrumentalities of committees, and a 
man's opportunities of usefulness in either the Senate or the House 
of Representatives are to a great extent controlled by the character 
of the committees to which he is assigned. When it is noted that 
Senator Pittman's assignments include the Committees on Terri- 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 21 

tories, on Mines and Mining, on Public Lands, on Indian Affairs, 
and on Arid Lands and Irrigation, and that he is constantly active 
in the work of all of these committees, it is at once apparent how 
indefatigable must be his attention to duties especially involving the 
interests of his State and all her western neighbors, as well as those 
of our great Territorial possessions, and how extensive are his oppor- 
tunities of practical local usefulness. When, moreover, it is also 
remembered that the Senator's service includes the Committee on 
Naval Affairs and that he was not long ago elected to membership 
on the Committee on Foreign Relations, the committee which under 
present conditions is the most important in the Senate, a more ade- 
quate estimate is possible of the extent of his usefulness and 
authority. 

I will not pretend to give an exhaustive recital of Senator Pitt- 
man's labors, but I deem it a privilege as well as a duty to submit 
to you in rapid succession the principal items of his accomplishment. 

Referring, first, to services more particularly national in their 
character, let me cite his active and helpful support of the income- 
tax law ; of the constitutional amendment for the popular election 
of United States Senators; of the child-labor bill; of the child- 
bureau bill; of the bill for the increase of the Army as passed by 
the Senate, and especially of the amendment relating to the manu- 
facture of nitrate, for which there is such an imperative national 
demand not only in the manufacture of powder as a part of our 
preparedness program, but also in the production of cyanides so 
essential in mining operations and as a fertilizer of constantly in- 
creasing requirement in the preservation and improvement of our 
agricultural lands; of the rural-credits bill; of the Federal reserve 
act; of the armor-plate factory bill, as to which he was given the 
unusual honor of being placed in charge of the hearing in the com- 
mittee and of the debate upon the floor of the Senate, duties per- 
formed by Senator Pittman with very exceptional ability and suc- 
cess, as may be seen from an examination of the published hearings 
in the committee and of the proceedings in the Senate, where, after 
encountering the opposition of the ablest and most resourceful Re- 
publican leaders, he passed the bill by a vote of 60 to 23. 

As before indicated, the culminating recognition accorded to 
Senator Pittman in the distinctly national field of senatorial useful- 
ness was his election to membership on the Senate Foreign Rela- 
tions Committee, over seven other candidates for the place, embrac- 
ing many of the most experienced and most influential of his col- 
leagues. 

Coming now to matters of primarily local character but of result- 
ant wider effects, let it be noted that Senator Pittman, as chairman 
of the Committee on Territories, had charge of, and passed, the bill 
for the construction of the Government railroad in Alaska, the first 
Government-constructed railroad in our Republic, an epochal enter- 
prise in some respects as significant as the building of the Panama 
Canal; that he had charge of, and passed, the Alaska coal leasing 
bill, which prevents monopoly in coal, will reduce the price of that 
necessity in the Western States, gives the poor man a chance at coal- 
mining, and contains stringent provisions protecting the workman 
in regard to health and to wages; and that, as chairman of a sub- 



22 AX EVOLUTION IX POLITICS. 

committee of the Senate Committee on Public Lands, he had charge 
of, and passed through the Senate, against strenuous opposition in- 
spired by representatives of powerful private interests, the bill that 
gave adequate and pure water supply to the city of San Francisco. 

In regard to services of especial interest to the people of Nevada, 
the list of Senator Pittman's performance is a long and striking one. 
I will barely mention its most important items: 

He had cyanides placed on the free list, reducing by 25 per cent 
the cost of this indispensable agent in the treatment of ores, and 
saving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the miners of Nevada. 

He actively supported the Senate resolution that the Government 
purchase 15,000,000 ounces of silver for coinage use, thus attempting 
to forestall a further ruinous fall in silver bullion. The resolution 
passed the Senate, but failed in the House of Representatives. But 
when, early in 1915, silver had fallen to 47f cents an ounce, Senator 
Pittman urged the Director of the Mint and the Treasurer of the 
United States to buy silver. After a time they did so; this action 
by the United States was followed by similar action by many other 
Governments; and the result was the rapid rise in the market value 
of silver which has been a startling feature of recent economic his- 
tory and is generally agreed to have a bearing of the utmost im- 
portance upon the mining development of Nevada and upon great 
questions of international finance. 

He promptly met the serious situation presented in the startling 
increase of rabid coyotes in Nevada by inducing the Department 
of Agriculture and the Bureau of Geological Survey to set 75 
hunters at work at once throughout the State in a crusade of exter- 
mination, and by securing an appropriation of $75,000 to continue 
the work. 

He had the State divided into two public-land districts, thus 
encouraging entry and settlement of the public domain located in 
Nevada by greatly reducing the difficult}", time, and expense in- 
curred by settlers. 

He succeeded, where his predecessors had many times tried and 
failed, in confirming and validating in the occupants, as against the 
claimant railroad companies, titles to a large amount of lands along 
rights of way traversing many of the towns and cities of Nevada. 

He passed through the Senate a bill to encourage the settlement 
and the development of the State through the discovery and utiliza- 
tion of artesian and subsurface waters; any citizen of the United 
States being authorized to locate four sections of land, with the 
right to explore for water thereon, conditioned upon his finding 
within two years and developing enough water practically to irri- 
gate 20 acres, whereupon he is to receive a patent for G40 acres. 

He passed through the Senate the bill granting 7,000,000 acres of 
the lands of the United States to the State of Nevada to aid in 
building up, equipping, and maintaining your great young State 
University, thus encouraging at once the settlement of the State, the 
preparation of her people for the intelligent performance of the 
highest duties of citizenship, and a permanent diminution of the 
cost of secondary education to the taxpayers. 

Those citizens of Nevada, whether men or women, who believe 
that finalh 7 the government of all must rest upon the consent of all ; 



AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 23 

who believe that taxation and representation should be reciprocal ; 
who believe that in our refining civilization an augmenting mixture 
of the feminine element makes for a higher sense of justice and 
morality and constitutes a prophecy of that ultimate condition of 
equality and peace which seems the destined goal of human social 
development, will not forget that Senator Pittman, from 1910 to this 
hour, has been a consistent and sincere advocate of the extension of 
the electoral franchise to the women of *Nevada. 

My fellow citizens, this record, which I have thus briefly sum- 
marized, is a subject for just pride to every citizen, and especially 
to every Democratic citizen, of Nevada. I repeat what I said a few 
minutes ago, that it is a record of distinction and usefulness not 
paralleled in the case of any other new member of the United States 
Senate in a similar period — four short years — during the last quar- 
ter of a century. This is not a figure of speech. It is the sober 
truth and a matter of my own personal knowledge. I assume the 
responsibility of saying that this record ought to entitle Key Pitt- 
man to a return to the Senate of the United States without a con- 
test, certainly without a contest within his own party. 

How could a new man hope to succeed to the same committee 
places? Where would he find an equivalent for that personal re- 
lationship now so complexly and so firmly established between your 
young Senator and his colleagues and so greatly conditioning his 
chance of influence? And what is the likelihood, based on the 
doctrine of mathematical chances, that a State would twice in suc- 
cession draw so exceptionally qualified a servant? What encourage- 
ment would it afford the brilliant and sincerely ambitious young 
manhood of Nevada to see such unusual fidelity, such constancy 
of effort, such prodigious achievement, such unprecedented prepara- 
tion for further service, rewarded by defeat for reelection at the 
hands of men who are beneficiaries of such labors and sharers in 
such renown? What estimate would the older members of the 
Union, whose faithful and illustrious public men are continued in 
office to increase the weight and influence of their constituents, place 
upon the judgment of a struggling western Commonwealth which 
should deliberately refuse to recommission a Senator whose first 
term, and that not of full duration, had placed him high among 
the leaders of the Council-of-Elders of the States? The Demo- 
crats of Nevada can not be so ungrateful to their faithful represen- 
tative, so oblivious of their own interest, as to let it even seem 
doubtful whether Key Pittman is to be returned to Washington. 
It is inconceivable that, while he remains on the firing line at the 
Capital, his fellow Democrats can not be trusted to maintain their 
faith at home. 

Democrats of Nevada, you have now a special duty and oppor- 
tunity. I have tried to point them out to you in a way whose sin- 
cerity may, I hope, excuse the presumption of so much emphasis. 
But I want you to listen a moment to the voice of one whose whisper 
is louder than my shout ; whose wish should be more persuasive than 
a command to every loyal Democrat in Nevada; whose great in- 
tellect is busy with the most complicated, difficult, and momentous 
affairs ever thrust into the keeping of a President of the Eepublic, 



24 AN EVOLUTION IN POLITICS. 

and whose heart is full of the wide and intimate concerns of human- 
ity itself. 

Let me read }'ou two telegrams: 

Elko, Nev., May 9, 1916. 
Hon. Woodkow Wilson, 

White House, Washington, D. C.- 
May I be permitted to assure you that the Democrats of the State of Nevada 
are in most hearty and enthusiastic accord with all the principles and policies 
that you have so ably and patriotically pronounced and maintained? I am 
satisfied that all the independent voters share in these sentiments. We are 
certain of your reelection, but realize the necessity of loyal support in Congress 
to the ultimate success of your principles and policies, and are therefore very 
desirous of knowing whether you have any preference with regard to who 
should he selected by the Democrats in this State as candidate of the Demo- 
cratic Party for the United States Senate. 

(Signed) A. W. Hessox. State Senator. 



The AVhite House, 
Washington, D. C, Man 17. 1916. 
Hon. A. W. Hessox, Elko, Nev.: 

Your telegram received. I am following with the greatest interest the cam- 
paign in Nevada. Senator Pittman has been so generous and consistent an 
advocate of the policies which seem to me to carry at their heart the real wel- 
fare and progress of the country that I can not help feeling -the profoundest 
interest fn his return to the Senate. Those who have been associated with him 
here, as I have been, I am sure must all share with me the judgment that it 
would be a very serious loss to the Senate were he not returned. 

Woodkow Wilson. 

My friends, need more be said? I confess I feel as though now 
my duty were discharged. It is a privilege to be permitted to per- 
form it; and I shall return to my home in the East, where I have 
never been able to forget that I am a western man, firm in the con- 
viction that the Democrats of Nevada are only awaiting an oppor- 
tunity to speak their sovereign word in reaffirmation of the faith of 
the fathers; in self-rededication to the new crusade of Democracy to 
make good its ancient creed; in loyal and patriotic devotion to 
America as the champion and hope of humanity in a world that 
has seemingly forgotten God; in freemen's homage to our great 
President in his resolute determination to achieve domestic justice, 
to preserve international peace, and to vindicate the rights of all 
mankind. 

o 




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